The 1996 Telecom Act enabled unprecedented radio station consolidation.

Evidence

Unlike in other countries, radio companies in the U.S. are required to share only minimal revenue with musicians (who are supposed to be happy with the promotion) and they remain a highly lucrative business for advertising. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 dramatically deregulated the radio industry, no longer limiting the number of radio stations one company could own. Clear Channel, for instance, spent $30 billion to acquire more than twelve hundred radio stations, resulting in ownership of as many as seven stations in a single market, 60 percent of the rock radio market, and equity stakes in 240 international radio stations. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 193

Categorization

• XREF: Radio consolidation via deregulation is an ideal causal channel into playlist homogenization — the formal feature of what gets played — which is exactly the reader’s finance-to-form question.
• SHARE: Someone studying consolidation of cultural industries (or media economics generally) would want the specific claim that one firm held 60 percent of the rock radio market.